“There is still an angry darkness inside you.” Aggie leaned back and relaxed, her eyes serene, like a nun’s, like a woman who had made her choices and was okay with them. Not anything like me. “This anger is perhaps the core of who you are. It storms in the very center of your being, and it forms the basis of every decision you have ever made. We should look at this anger.”
After a moment I said, “I made a vow when I was five years old.” Aggie waited, implacable, resting in that enveloping sense of peace. “I made a vow to kill the men who murdered my father and raped my mother.” To give her credit, Aggie didn’t flinch at the bald statement. I eased back to the floor, my heels and butt on the cool clay. “I put my hands in my father’s cooling blood.” I put out my left hand as I had done as a child, to show her. “And I wiped it down my face.” I lifted my hand, palm facing me, and dragged it down my face, slowly, feeling again my father’s blood, sticky. The air cool as it hit the streaks of blood on my cheeks and forehead. “And I promised to kill them. I looked them in the face, silently, but promising that they would die. I was only five. I thought I hadn’t succeeded. Until I remembered the bearded man hanging over a fire circle.” This time, Aggie sat forward, her pupils wide in the firelight, her mouth opening slightly. “He was the yunega in my memory. There was an old woman, my grandmother. She poked him with a stick. I want to remember that. All of it. I think that is part of the dark, angry place inside.”
“Anger, building and storming,” Aggie said. I nodded. “Okay.” She put on the music, a wood flute, playing a haunting melody. She lifted a heavy, earthen pitcher and dripped water over the hot rocks with a ladle. It hissed and spat. Steam rose, the air growing close and humid. My sweating increased instantly. Aggie passed me a bottle of water and I opened the top and drank. The water tasted bitter, and I stopped midswallow, watching her. “It’s got a little something in it to help you remember,” she said. I grunted and finished the bottle, draining it.
Aggie took the empty and chose a smudge stick from the basket. She lit the end. A bitter, acrid smell filled the steamy room. I breathed in. Closed my eyes. Time passed.
The room grew much lighter, as if the door was open. I turned to it, and saw an old woman enter. She was wearing a shift, coarsely woven cotton over her naked body, bony legs showing beneath, her feet bare. “The yunega is dead,” she said. “Come.”
I stood, the clay floor chilling the soles of my bare feet. I was wearing a blue dress, which I saw in glimpses as I walked out of the house, down the trail to the small clearing. I kept my eyes low as we entered the open space. In the center of it was a circle of white quartz stones, with gray rocks inside and the remains of a fire—ashes and one blackened log. Something black hung above the cold fire. It dripped once, a drop of reddish water trickling down and falling into the ashes. I let my eyes rise to the blackened stumps. They had once been feet. Now they were scorched meat, with blisters above in the scarlet flesh. The skin had split and wept. I let my eyes rise up the man’s body.
His upper thighs were red and covered with dried blood. I smelled burned hair, and saw little blackened curls of hair on his skin. His manhood was gone, leaving only a patch of raw meat. I remembered his scream when it was removed—a long ululating wail. Above the wound was a white belly, hanging and slack, like a fish belly. His chest had brown nipples and hair, like the stomach of a dog. Men of Tsalagiyi did not have so much hair on their chests. Only the yunega had hair all over their bodies, like dogs or rats. My father’s chest had been smooth when I dipped my hand into his blood.
The white man who raped my mother hung from sharpened deer antlers that had been shoved through his shoulders. His hands were tied behind his back with rope. Lank hair, the color of acorns, fell forward, half hiding his bearded face. He had had no beard, only the mustache when Uni Lisi captured him. Now his face was scruffy, like a bear, with hair. His blue eyes were open and dry, staring down at his body. His mouth was open in a silent scream. With my skinwalker nose, I could smell his blood and the stink of rot, but white men always smelled of rot and unwashed bodies. “Are you sure he is dead, Elisi?” I asked.
Elisi picked up a stick from the fire and stabbed him. “He no longer bleeds.”
“Do we eat him?”
“No. Skinwalkers do not eat the bodies of our enemies. It is forbidden. It makes us sick.”
I nodded and turned away. “Good,” I said. I looked up at the leaves in the trees. They were golden and scarlet, with patches of blue sky showing through. “And the other one?” I asked.
“He is next.”
*
I swam back up from the vision of fall leaves and blue sky. I was gasping and wet with sweat. The thin cloth tied above my breasts and hanging to my knees was soaked and limp as I shoved up with my elbows against the clay floor. “Elis—” I stopped, my throat so dry I couldn’t speak. Aggie handed me another bottle of water. I opened it and drank it down, and nothing had ever tasked so good.
A demon had told me recently that I had never taken vengeance on my enemies. That he had killed my grandmother in the snow, as he had killed many of the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears. The demon had lied. A laugh escaped my mouth, half hysterical with shock. The demon had lied. Fierce joy threaded through me, weaving into my soul. “Elisi killed him. My grandmother killed him.”
Aggie nodded slowly. “Your grandmother was a warrior woman, like those of old.” There was no condemnation in the tones. “Did you see it? Did she make you watch his death?”
I started to shake my head and stopped. I had a quick image of leaves, dark and thick, over my face. Beyond them was fire, a man hanging over it, screaming. Three women worked over him, mostly naked, wearing only thin shifts, their clothes draped across nearby bushes. The women were Etsa, my mother, and her sister, and Elisi. “I wasn’t supposed to see it,” I whispered. “But I hid. I watched. Until he started screaming so bad. When they cut him.”
I looked at Aggie. “I led my grandmother to him. To them. I caused their deaths.”